Saltin said something else I found interesting. He thinks altitude training in the off-season has no long lasting physiological benefits after returning to sea level. It's only meaningful in the weeks prior to a targeted event.

(translated) bengt saltin, ‘…clearly, some national teams use epo, i know a tad too much’

he said this during the swedish team’s high-altitude camp in italy about 3 weeks ago. (for those unfamiliar, bengt was the anti-doping czar at fis and is a true pioneer of longitudinal blood studies and monitoring. he is now a consultant with the swedish team)

What nation(s) did he mean ?

the finns who have been rather quiet since the times revealed by kari-pekka kyrö ?
the russians who after a wave of the recent epo scandals have little to show except for their sprinters ?
the swiss whose single superstar cologna could hardly constitute a nation ?
the canadians whose kershaw and harvey moved up but are hardly a dominant nation ?
the americans who have been a non-factor for ever ?

could this be the norwegians ? nah, Charlotte Kalla (in another recent article in aftonbladet) went out of her way to praise the Norwegians for being very open and transparent with her, even sharing the video…)

btw, the article also describes the innovative high altitude approach used by the swedes for the first time. It involves monitoring not only the lactate but also around the clock oxygen saturation, even during their sleep. The goal was to determine optimum altitude for each skier allowing maximizing rbc production. saltin said that differences between the skier were significant. They also mentioned that northug checked into the same high-altitude hotel where the swedes were staying.

@Python,
Please offer your view on high-altitude training. Which % do you offer to both the credible science side and the BS Propaganda side of that?
Mine: 30/70.
Cyclists have Tenerife, Skier have even harder to reach glaciers. Why would we nod frantically when skiers talk about altitude?
Cologna comes from Davos (1600m village), Kenya use their high-altitude youth as a reason for their speed. The latter are being caught with EPO more and more.

@Python,
Please offer your view on high-altitude training. Which % do you offer to both the credible science side and the BS Propaganda side of that?
Mine: 30/70.

before i express my opinion, i’d separate the 2 issues - the credible science and the propaganda - because they are not mutually exclusive …

first, the altitude training and simulation, particularly the technique termed live high/train low, is solid enough and is supported by credible science. The key is that the athlete has to be a responder. this is a scientific fact - many are poor responders. true enough, a good responder regardless of the endurance sport, can gain a couple percentage points. unlike with the synthetic epo, this gain is predictable and relatively small b/c it is limited by the natural physiologic feedback mechanism. a plausible and realistic assumption would be an increase in total haemoglobin mass of less than 5% (recall, that ashenden concluded that up to 10% increase was undetectable by blood passport when epo was micro-dosed)

then, as you put it, there is the bs propaganda side…that is, when an athlete and/or his coach would try to use the high altitude concept to cover up own blood doping.

we know for a fact, this happened many times. i described some place a couple of ways how a sophisticated and proven cheater like armstrong was misusing high-altitude simulation to mask blood doping. it would be beyond silly to assume that the top xc skiers and their doping advisers live in isolation…

what percentage of the top xc skiers are currently masking blood doping ?

though i am absolutely sure the cheating is taking place, an honest answer is i don’t know.

the best anyone can do is listen to credible, informed insiders like saltin and damsgaard whilst not taking everything they say as a gospel. for example, damsgaard is on record - and he’s been inside both sports - that doping in xc skiing is far less sophisticated than in cycling. he could be right but he said this several years back before some xc ski teams started to bring altitude simulating equipment to races...

that might be so, but i don’t exclude (though id give it a very remote probability) that the 77 y. o. impeccable authority like saltin, perhaps even unwittingly, was being misused to cover up a sophisticated doping scheme.

after all, we don’t even have to search hard to realize that the very similar situation almost happened with another doping and anti-doping champs - armstrong and catlin. i mean the texan's return in 2009 and dragging an authority no less than catlin to cover up his now proven blood doping in 2009.

are the Norwegians as arrogant and brazen ? speaking from personal cultural and ethnic experience - absolutely not!!

but then, i also would never imagine that breivik could ever happen in norway…

__________________'As for Marit, without the medicine, she would have no chance' -EOB I don't f***ing care. It's his problem not mine--Bernard Hinault

But then there are the Swedes. Even less arrogant/brazen.
Norwegians openly look for fights with them, and the Swedes just reply kindly.

Also, the top swedes have been KILLED at the ends of races by Norwegians of late. Totally destroyed. Different league, multiple leagues apart. That's not a glacier workout of difference. And it was not just Northug against one Swede with a particularly mediocre finish.
Should the Swedes get better finish this season, I'll likely be inclined to think they hopped along on the bandwagon. You can't say the Swedes are being lazy or unskilled. But see how they are out-skied the past few years. I'd not come back after such defeat, when I was morally clean.

The Finnish documentary "Sinivalkoinen valhe" will be shown on Norwegian TV (NRK) on Saturday, where it is called "When heroes lie". When it premiered in Finland in September the Norwegian press picked up on the Juha Mieto story, but there were almost no mention of the Norwegian content.
As mentioned before in this thread Dr. Harald Oftebro is interviewed in the film (he now says there has been some fancy editing of his statements), but there is also an anonymous source, who is introduced as someone who played a key role in Norwegian cross country skiing in the 90's. And he says there were as much doping in Norway as there were in Finland.

The story was presented on the evening news today, and there were interviews with various ppl from the era who were aghast and said they needed the name of the source. The Director-General of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, Hans-Tore Bjerkaas, has now given an interview where he says he knows who the source is and that the source is quoted correctly and that the source is "relevant".

Very interesting. If that source is Norwegian and legitimate, then its going to be hard to dismiss him as a bitter and jealous hater.

That's exactly what most people are doing on various Norwegian forums right now. They're using precisely the same arguments as Armstrong did..."he's just jealous, the Finns are bitter and have no credibility" etc. Also some threats against the source in true Armstrong-style.

Very interesting. If that source is Norwegian and legitimate, then its going to be hard to dismiss him as a bitter and jealous hater.

Heard the Finnish claims for years (first after 1984 Olympics and increasingly after they themselves were caught repeatedly). Last time around: If... , and now: If..! If they got some new information I (everyone) would like to know. Your statement has been valid for more than a couple of decades and so what? Why are you not interested in those you and everyone else know are guilty and why repeat old stories as it was new?

Heard the Finnish claims for years (first after 1984 Olympics and increasingly after they themselves were caught repeatedly). Last time around: If... , and now: If..! If they got some new information I (everyone) would like to know. Your statement has been valid for more than a couple of decades and so what? Why are you not interested in those you and everyone else know are guilty and why repeat old stories as it was new?

Do you really want to know though? I mean the Finns have it easy, they know their history is dirty. They didn't really know until it was made painfully obvious by a huge scandal. Even after that there are plenty of people who really don't want to hear more about it and the discussions around the subject seem anything but honest. No point digging up old dirt and so on. Now the issue with the latest 'Finnish claims' that seem to annoy you is that they aren't really about Norwegians. It's for most parts the silly Finns digging into their own dirt and trying to put what they find into context. If you don't like it, dismiss it. I wouldn't expect a documentary into the history of doping in Finland to have much insight into Norwegian sports. It's really up to the Norwegians to figure it out for themselves if you want a reliable source and maybe they already have and there's nothing to worry about.

I do know that trying to label the current 'Finnish claims' as something that has been around for almost 30 years is pure BS. It sounds very much like someone who prefers to know there is nothing to worry about rather than dig too deep into the issues. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that to be honest.